Facebook, Inc.

Timothy A Kendall

Mark E Zuckerberg

Adam Edward D'Angelo

Robert Kang-Xing Jin

Andrew Garrod Bosworth

Justin M Rosenstein

Yun-Fang Juan

Chamath M Palihapitiya

Yishan Wong

Matthew R Cohler

Kent Schoen

Adam D'angelo

Gregory Joseph Badros

Robert Kang Xing Jin

Ami Vora

Gregory Luc Dingle

David Benjamin Fischer

Third-party publishers (such as websites) provide online advertisements combined with social endorsement information to users. A request for an advertisement is received from a viewing user via a third-party publisher system. A particular advertisement is selected in response to this request, and one or more advertisement tags associated with the advertisement are retrieved. The advertisement tags comprise information related to the advertisement. Social networking system data for users related to the viewing user is retrieved. Social endorsement information is obtained using the social networking system data and the advertisement tags associated with the advertisement. The social endorsement information and the advertisement are then combined and transmitted to the third-party publisher system, or are transmitted individually for combination by the third-party publisher system.

Providing social endorsements with online advertising

In one embodiment, a method is described for tracking information about the activities of users of a social networking system while on another domain by maintaining a profile for each user of the social networking system, each profile identifying a connection to other users of the social networking system and including information about the user, receiving communications from a third party website having a different domain than the social network system, each message communicating an action taken by a user of the social networking system on the third party website, logging the actions taken on the third-party website in the social networking system, each logged action including information about the action, and correlating the logged actions with one or more advertisements presented to the one or more users on the third-party website as well as correlating the logged actions with a user of the social networking system.

Communicating information in a social network system about activities from another domain

A social networking system generates socially-relevant stories for a user based on actions taken by other users to whom the user is connected. The social networking system may receive a request for a sponsored story for a viewing user and may select information about one or more actions performed by one or more users to whom the viewing user is connected to identify one of a plurality of candidate information for a sponsored story based on one or more criteria (e.g., affinity of the viewing user for the candidates, expected value for the candidates, etc.). The social networking system may also generate the sponsored story and generate a feed comprising the sponsored story and news stories (e.g., non-sponsored stories) about one or more users of the social networking system with whom the viewing user is connected. This feed may be provided for display to the viewing user.

Social advertisements and other informational messages on a social networking website, and advertising model for same

A social networking system generates socially-relevant ads for a user based on actions taken by other users to whom the user is connected. These may be actions taken on, and determined by, an external system, information about which actions can be received by the social networking system and used for matching to an advertisement request. The social networking system may determine a social context for advertising to a user based on the action and may generate an advertisement for the matched ad request that includes an informational message communicating the social context (i.e., an ad with the information message appended to it, a news story for the informational message, etc.). The ad may be targeted to the user based on user affinity for the ad, based on an object interacted with or an action taken by the user's connections on or external to the social networking system, among other criteria.

Social advertisements based on actions on an external system

A social networking system generates socially-relevant stories for a user based on other users (e.g., based on actions taken by other users) to whom the user is connected. These socially-relevant stories, including news stories, social advertisements, etc., may be presented on a web page within a domain of an external system that is different from the domain of the social networking system. When a web page from an external system is requested for a viewing user, the social content about other users who are connected to the viewing user may be provided by the social networking system for that viewing user. This personalized social content may be presented in a frame (e.g., an iframe) of the external web page rendered and provided for display to the viewing user.

Presenting personalized social content on a web page of an external system

A system and method for auction based polling is provided. Parameters related to a poll are received from a first user. Parameters related to a poll are received from a first user. A query is associated with the poll. A priority of the poll is determined based on the parameters. The poll is distributed to one or more second users according to the priority. Results to the poll are gathered. The results are reported to the first user.

Auction-based selection and presentation of polls to users

Auction based polling

Growing community of inventors

San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Timothy A Kendall